Army Stands Up New Command to Provide Global Counterintelligence Support
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Army Stands Up New Command to Provide Global Counterintelligence Support

The U.S. Army has activated a new command tasked with providing counterintelligence support that aligns with the Department of Defense modernization efforts.

The Army Counterintelligence Command conducts counterintelligence activities to identify and neutralize insider threats facing the Army and DOD forces worldwide, the service branch said Tuesday.

Brig. Gen. Rhett Cox took over the responsibility of the ACIC as its first commanding general during a ceremony at the command’s headquarters at Fort George G. Meade in Maryland.

Cox, a graduate of Virginia Military Institute, was commissioned in the U.S. Army Military Intelligence Corps and has been assigned to various military units, including the 10th Mountain Division, the 513th Military Intelligence Brigade and the 704th MI Brigade.

“Today’s military environment is defined by rapid technological change and intense strategic competition from our adversaries. We must do our part to ensure we are competing, imposing costs and shake our enemy’s belief that they can operate uncontested,” Cox said.

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DOD-Backed R&D Center for 6G Systems Launched at Northeastern University
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DOD-Backed R&D Center for 6G Systems Launched at Northeastern University

A Northeastern University institute has launched Open6G, a research hub that is focused on advancing sixth generation mobile networks and is supported by the Department of Defense.

The federal-industry-university cooperative facility seeks to drive research and development of beyond-5G systems through funding from the Innovate Beyond 5G program of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, the university’s Institute for the Wireless Internet of Things said Tuesday.

Open6G is expected to be a center for R&D, demonstration and commercialization of open, programmable and disaggregated 6G applications. Studies will include mmWave and terahertz systems, Web 3.0, future spectrum access and exploitation, artificial intelligence and machine learning as well as augmented and virtual reality.

It will be headquartered at the university’s Burlington, Massachusetts innovation campus, near other technology facilities such as Colosseum, the biggest emulator of virtualized wireless systems in the world.

Some of WIoT’s industry partners for the initiative are Raytheon Technologies, Mitre, NVIDIA, Dell Technologies, AT&T, Dell Technologies and Red Hat.

“The Open6G Center will accelerate core beyond-5G protocol stack components that serve both DOD and commercial wireless requirements and applications,” said Sumit Roy, program director for Innovate Beyond 5G at OUSD(R&E).

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GAO Urges NNSA to Implement Cybersecurity Risk Management for Nuclear Weapons IT
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GAO Urges NNSA to Implement Cybersecurity Risk Management for Nuclear Weapons IT

The National Nuclear Security Administration should fully implement foundational cybersecurity practices to protect its digital environments from malicious actors, the Government Accountability Office said.

In a report released Thursday, GAO found that while NNSA has been digitizing and automating its services and equipment, there were gaps in the latter’s cybersecurity policies as well as those of its contractors and subcontractors.

Federal laws require the agency to follow six key principles to mitigate IT security risk. These include assigning risk management roles and responsibilities, establishing an organization-wide risk management strategy, and creating and maintaining cybersecurity program policies.

The government watchdog found that NNSA only partially implemented the foundational practices across its traditional IT, operational technology and nuclear weapons IT environments.

GAO’s audit came after a Senate committee called for a review of the NNSA’s cybersecurity “posture”. As a result, the office issued nine recommended actions, including involving the NNSA Office of Information Management in monitoring strategies, and revising and reviewing its baseline IT security program directive at least every three years.

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Iris Ferguson on DOD’s Move to Form Arctic Strategy & Global Resilience Office
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Iris Ferguson on DOD’s Move to Form Arctic Strategy & Global Resilience Office

The Department of Defense created an office to protect U.S. interests in the Arctic and Iris Ferguson, the newly appointed deputy assistant secretary for Arctic and global resilience at DOD, described the region as critical for homeland defense and power projection, DOD News reported Tuesday.

“It’s important to have an office like this now to try to start laying the groundwork for how we can best prepare ourselves and to know what the challenges of the future may be,” said Ferguson, formerly a senior adviser on Arctic and climate security issues for U.S. Air Force Futures.

“There might not be conflict now – and there hopefully will never be conflict in the Arctic – but we need to be prepared to operate there,” she added.

Ferguson said DOD is witnessing coastal erosion and other geophysical changes that have an impact on its radar sites and other infrastructure and operations and is working to mitigate problems related to melting permafrost foundations.

Ferguson mentioned geopolitical activities by strategic competitors like Russia and China in the Arctic and the U.S. defense strategy in the region.

“The priorities for that defense strategy are in protecting the homeland, ensuring that our national interests are safeguarded and protected, and working with nations on shared challenges,” Ferguson said. “The overarching goal is to ensure we maintain peace and stability in the region.”

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House Lawmakers Ask FCC to Delay Consideration of Potential Orbital Debris Mitigation Rules
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House Lawmakers Ask FCC to Delay Consideration of Potential Orbital Debris Mitigation Rules

A group of bipartisan House lawmakers sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission to postpone consideration of potential rules to mitigate the risk of orbital space debris at its upcoming meeting on Thursday.

“As leaders of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, we understand the importance of supporting a safe, sustainable space environment. However, we are concerned that the Commission’s proposal to promulgate rules on this matter could create uncertainty and potentially conflicting guidance,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter dated Tuesday.

According to the letter, the FCC does not have clear congressional authority to implement regulations with regard to orbital debris mitigation and NASA is tasked with reviewing the country’s standards and practices for such matters.

Reps. Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Texas; Frank Lucas, R-Okla.; Don Beyer, D-Va.; and Brian Babin, R-Texas, signed the Sept. 27 letter, which was addressed to FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel.

Johnson and Lucas respectively serve as chairwoman and ranking member of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee. Beyer acts as chairman and Babin as ranking member of the House subcommittee on space and aeronautics.

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GSA Promotes Use of Robotic Process Automation
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GSA Promotes Use of Robotic Process Automation

The General Services Administration has implemented robotic process automation tools to modernize several internal tasks and is offering assistance to other federal agencies that want to improve operational efficiency with such technology.

RPA has helped agency personnel to significantly reduced processing time and minimize errors especially through the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a GSA blog post published Monday.

The Heartland Acquisition Center RPA, or HACMAN bot, has aided GSA employees in managing nearly 20,000 orders and has saved the agency nearly 5,000 labor hours since the software application was launched in January.

GSA is working to adopt more intelligent automation such as optical character recognition and natural language processing software designed to capture unstructured data from images and documents with different types or formats. 

The agency expects its automated system to support the processing of 8,000 federal leases that are due for an update in compliance with new accounting standards slated to take effect in October 2023.

GSA intends for the RPA program to spare over 32,000 hours of tedious, manual tasks and is promoting process automation adoption through its Federal RPA Community of Practice.

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Juliane Gallina, CIA’s Associate Deputy Director of Digital Innovation, Shares Top Intelligence Community Priorities & Threats in New Video Interview
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Juliane Gallina, CIA’s Associate Deputy Director of Digital Innovation, Shares Top Intelligence Community Priorities & Threats in New Video Interview

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has been at the forefront of global intelligence for the past 75 years; today, in order to stay ahead of evolving threats and maintain the United States’ information advantage, the agency is adapting in new ways.

Juliane Gallina, associate deputy director of the CIA’s Digital Innovation directorate, spoke with Executive Mosaic in a new video interview about how global events are impacting the U.S. intelligence community, which new technologies we should be focusing on today, how our adversaries are changing the threat landscape and what American citizens can do to help stop the dangerous spread of disinformation.

Click here to watch the full video interview with the CIA’s Juliane Gallina, and be sure to subscribe to Executive Mosaic’s YouTube channel so you never miss an interview!

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NSWCDD to Host Virtual AI Innovation Challenge for University Students
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NSWCDD to Host Virtual AI Innovation Challenge for University Students

Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division is hosting a virtual innovation challenge aimed at developing artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms to automate the scheduling and coordination of advanced weapon systems.

The two-phase competition offers a total of $75,000 in cash prizes and is open for college and university student innovators who will be given access to the U.S. Navy’s Joint Cognitive Operational Research Environment, Naval Sea Systems Command said Monday.

JCORE is a medium-fidelity software tool that serves as the service branch’s in-house wargaming system designed to simulate fleet-level exercises.

During the first phase of challenge, the selected teams, each consisting of no more than five students, will develop and submit their white paper.

NSWCDD will hold a virtual panel on Sept. 30 to answer questions about the competition.

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DHS S&T’s Melissa Oh on SVIP’s Role in Strengthening Cyber Infrastructure
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DHS S&T’s Melissa Oh on SVIP’s Role in Strengthening Cyber Infrastructure

Melissa Oh, managing director of Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate’s Silicon Valley Innovation Program, said the SVIP initiative plays a critical role in boosting the nation’s defenses against cyber threats.

In a blog post, Oh said the funding program expands DHS S&T’s reach to identify new technologies designed to strengthen national security by partnering with the innovation community.

“The program reaches out to innovation communities across the nation and around the world to harness the commercial R&D ecosystem for technologies with government applications and to co-invest in and accelerate technology transition-to-market,” Oh explained.

SVIP has identified 16 technologies from three separate cybersecurity topic areas, namely internet of things security, financial services cyber security active defense and identity and anti-spoofing of non-person entities.

The program has an open other transaction solicitation that have up to five phases and a total funding of approximately $75 million over the next five years.

“Since its inception, SVIP has remained committed to identifying and developing the most innovative technology to support DHS in its mission to fortify the nation’s cybersecurity,” Oh said.

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AFRL, New York ANG Partner to Advance AI C2 Technology Development
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AFRL, New York ANG Partner to Advance AI C2 Technology Development

The Air Force Research Laboratory’s Information Directorate in Rome has entered into an agreement with the New York Air National Guard’s 152nd Air Operations Group to develop artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies for military command and control.

Under the memorandum of understanding, the partnership will develop and execute a repeatable process to assess the use of AI and machine learning-powered command and control technologies and establish procedures that support next-generation concept of operations, Air Force Material Command said Monday.

The partnership also aims to advance command and control operations in support of the Joint All Domain Command and Control initiative and the Advanced Battle Management System.

“Command and control is about decision superiority and this partnership will improve security and protection,” said Col. Fred Garcia, director of AFRL’s Information Directorate.

The MOU will also ease the creation, integration and maintenance of AI/machine learning command and control functionalities, paving a way for a “more straightforward setup to enable better management and performance,” Garcia added.

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